The present invention relates to a fastening system for attaching accessories to a vehicle.
When attaching accessories such as overhead consoles, grab handles and the like to a vehicle, snap-in fasteners of the type for example disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,285,551 are frequently employed to allow the accessory to be snap-fitted within apertures in the vehicle supporting sheet metal at the assembly line. This facilitates installation without the utilization of tools such as screwdrivers. Thus, such accessories can be preassembled and quickly installed on the assembly line by snap-fitting the accessory into place.
One problem with the preassembly of such snap-in accessories is that the snap-in fastener and its mating aperture must be aligned to securely hold the accessory in place in a rattle-free installation. Thus, the accessory must align closely with the apertures into which it is mounted. During manufacturing, if the tolerances are slightly off of either the apertures formed in the sheet metal structure or the vehicle body or the positioning of the fasteners on the accessory, a misfit can occur which could either prevent a successful installation or provide one which is unacceptable.
Some efforts have been made to provide for such tolerance variations by, for example, employing an enlarged aperture and then shifting the accessory from the enlarged aperture to an adjoining narrowed section of the aperture which closely fits the fastener. Such an arrangement is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,186,517. Other efforts to provide orthogonal shifting of vehicle accessory mounting clips have been attempted in which two vertically spaced apart, orthogonally extending, rectangular slots in the sheet metal roof of the vehicle accommodate, to some extent, shifting of a snap-in fastener having multiple levels of engagement with the slots. Such a complex arrangement, however, requires two separate slots in spaced apart sheet metal sections of the vehicle support structure, which is typically not available.
Therefore, there exists a need for a snap-in vehicle mounting system in which a vehicle accessory can be readily attached to a vehicle utilizing a snap-in fastener and one which accommodates for tolerance variations so that the accessory fastener can be readily inserted into a receiving aperture for mounting the accessory to the underlying sheet metal support of a vehicle.